I read an article with an attractive title recently. " Complexity and Context-Dependency ". It's not very good, but it raises an important point that is important to what I call the psycho-pathology of disciplines and it puts me in mind of something I've thought for a long tim...
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A highlight of my calendar I have to say - since I inadvertently morphed into Mr Innovation and they started inviting me. Did you have an absolutely fantastic science teacher? Now's the time to get them some recognition. NOMINATION CALL 2012 PRIME MINISTER’S PRIZES FOR SCIENCE...
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When I did the Government 2.0 Taskforce, one of the subjects that was earnestly discussed was archiving of government sites. It's a big problem in government. I could never see why it should be a big problem. After all you can look at anything written on ClubTroppo since it st...
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I remember being at a wedding reception talking to someone who was 70 odd. I asked them whether in their day it was normal for the bride and groom to put the tip of the knife in the cake and then beam at the cameras for two or three minutes - celebrities on their special day....
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Katie's Australia Day - Brazilian style! Food blogger Katie Quinn Davies' Australia Day recipes. Australia Day from afar: "One of the most surprising things for me to experience out of Australia was people saying–even in the American South!–Australia’s really racist, isn’t it?...
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A) Hey, you know what today is? Invasion Day! B) What? A) Invasion Day. B) Invasion Day? A) Yeah, 'cause it's the day they invaded us Kooris. B) Oh, InVASion Day A) So all those people wearing Australian flags are celebrating Invasion Day. 'cept the ones that feel sorry for us...
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What a load of old sensationalist nonsense. I'm seriously starting to worry about Giz. If I want to search anonymously there is a thing called an anonymous tab. And I don't log into my Google account outside work because why would I? - My phone is logged in. That's how the fir...
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British Leyland devoured billions pounds of taxpayer's money before it was finally broken up and sold off. According to New York Times journalist Nelson Schwartz the Thatcher government's bailout "remains the classic example of a futile government intervention." Mrs Thatcher w...
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Quite funny http://youtu.be/1p-TV4jaCMk
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https://youtu.be/x6f4ZB2xnF8 (Four minutes of extracts from a 27 minute video which can be watched here .) Herewith my column for the SMH and Age in Ross Gittins' spot while he's on vacation. It's the column of the essay which is here . As he was wheeled around on the emergenc...
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White to play Vidmar vs Euwe 34. ? See game for solution. As Troppodillians know my definition of an immortal game is one that involves some serious sacrificing and that the only pieces of the winners side that are left on the board have a role in the final checkmate. Click th...
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I wouldn't be expecting the New Zealand economy starts catching up to Australia any time soon. While they have their usual ideological stoushes there's something that sticks out like a ham sandwich at a bar-mitzvah. NZ is capital starved. Owing it seems to our compulsory super...
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The Jericho amendments: At Grog's Gamut Greg Jericho checks out the Australian Public Service Commission's new guidelines for public servants engaging in public comment. Some of the principles are "so obvious or dumb as could only be written by a public servant", says Jericho,...
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The way the world of copyright is set up to gouge each individual market separately is growing costlier and costlier particularly for small far away markets like our own. I'd love to buy an Amazon Kindle Fire and subscribe to Amazon Prime . But there's not much point doing the...
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Restructuring and productivity growth in uk manufacturing We analyse productivity growth in UK manufacturing 1980-92 using the newly available ARD panel of establishments drawn from the Census of Production. We examine the contribution to productivity growth of 'internal' rest...
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Tell me about it! From Bloomberg View . Academic economists have recently become the unaccustomed subjects of intense scrutiny. The 2010 documentary “ Inside Job ” drew public attention to the board seats, consulting gigs and sponsored research that tie many of them to Wall St...
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“Oh, my goodness, the John Birch Society! ... Is that bad? I have a lot of friends in the John Birch Society" ( Texas congressman Ron Paul ). In Tuesday's Sydney Morning Herald , Tom Switzer describes presidential hopeful Ron Paul as a socially tolerant free-market crusader wh...
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Does Linking Worker Pay to Firm Performance Help the Best Firms Do Even Better? This paper analyzes the linkages among group incentive methods of compensation, labor practices, worker assessments of workplace culture, turnover, and firm performance in a non-representative samp...
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Thomas Paine was a remarkable fellow who lived at a time of, and helped bring about two great revolutions of the modern age - the American and French ones. His time discovered political pamphleteering in a way that's quite similar to blogging today. People wrote pamphlets and...
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Herewith, a few days late, is my column in Ross Gittins' place from last weekend. There are a couple of things I would have liked to have covered in the column but didn't for lack of time. The first is that I suspect the biggest payoff in the area of law is not liberalisation...
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When New York Times public editor Arthur Brisbane asked whether Times reporters should challenge the 'facts' asserted by the newsmakers they write about a large majority of readers responded : "yes, you moron, The Times should check facts and print the truth." That's pretty mu...
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"Capitalism made America great - free markets, innovation, hard work - the building blocks of the American Dream. But in the wrong hands some of those dreams can turn into nightmares." 'When Mitt Romney Came to Town' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLWnB9FGmWE Promoted by Winni...
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Mitt Romney takes a tough line on welfare. In 2008 Republicans cheered when he said that America's culture was threatened by welfare payments to poor people . Asked how tax reform plan would help Americans on low incomes he said his plan was "primarily based on trying to creat...
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The missing liberals: Why is there no liberal party? Because there are so few people who support both economic and social liberal causes, says Andrew Norton . Andrew cites data from the 2010 Australian Election Survey. Dr Watson vs Dr Ludd: With access to huge databases, exper...
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Herewith - somewhat late owing to my being out of the country - is my second column for the Age and the SMH in Ross Gittins' place while he goes on hols. It seems there is further news - that we're disgorging some more money to the mendicant car companies. I am not close enoug...
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It is, of course, the season for holiday fun times making worthless definitions. Last week my wife and I were making a rare trip into Namba, a popular entertainment and shopping district in Osaka. We happened to see a restaurant named " Blue Billabong ( Japanese )". It purport...
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Treasury's mission is broad -- to improve the wellbeing of the Australian people. And according to Peter Martin its wellbeing framework empowers it "to fight homelessness just as much as it empowers it to fight inflation". As Martin explained back in 2008 the framework goes we...
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At the Economist's Democracy in America blog, Erica Grieder suspects that "the biggest untapped constituency is people who are fiscally conservative and socially moderate or liberal." Grieder links to a post by former Cato research fellow Will Wilkinson where he explains why h...
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Beyond soundbites: "There’s so much potential for political parties, who are more and more thought to be hollow, soulless things, to allow their MPs to show what they actually believe in and engage with people. Soundbites were useful when someone else controlled how much time...
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Of the many policy debates in Federal Parliament in 2011, one which gathered support from both major parties was the proposal to lift the superannuation guarantee employer contribution from 9 to 12 per cent. Not surprisingly, this was wholeheartedly endorsed by the superannuat...
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Judith Sloan wants the term banned , the editors of the Australian think it's bureaucratic gibberish and even the new minister for social inclusion seems unsure about what it means. So what is social inclusion? For the New Labour politicians who popularised the term social exc...
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